If it's Good Enough for Coca-Cola...

According to a news story that hit the internet last month, Coke and Unilever are using social media marketing enough that they're cutting their "regular" marketing budget. 

Here's the story from New Media Age:

Coca-Cola and Unilever are shifting their digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010.

The FMCG giants are moving away from sites created on a campaign-by-campaign basis in favour of investment in existing communities. While both companies will continue to create campaign sites for certain brands in the immediate future, they have said the long-term future lies with social media on platforms populated by their target consumers.

Coca-Cola will position its official Facebook and YouTube pages as the lead online channels for upcoming international activity for its Coke Zero and Fanta brands, new media age understands.

Prinz Pinakatt, the Coca-Cola Company’s interactive marketing manager for Europe, said, “In some cases some of our campaigns won’t need a coke.com-hosted site. In most cases these will still exist as it’s the most obvious destination for a consumer, but it might only be a page linking to YouTube encouraging people to join the community there.

“We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform,” Pinakatt added.

 My question: If it's good enough for Coca-Cola and the folks who bring us such products as Dove, Lipton, and Slim-Fast don't you think it should be good enough for the rest of us? 

I know--if it's so good for you, why don't I do more of it?  It's very possibly the biggest cop-out there is but the truth of the matter is that I don't want my business to grow to a point where I need to hire people.  I'm very happy with the way my business is going.  If I wanted to do marketing and grow my business I'd be doing the whole social media marketing gig.

"Ah, but now you have a blog," I hear you saying.  Yes, I do, and the reason I do is something you want to think about as well.  While most of my clients have blogs to get their name out there and show people why it would be a good idea to do business with them, many of them are also utilizing the system to help keep their current clients up-to-date on information that will help them in their fields.

Back to the whole Coke and Unilever thing.  When the big boys start using social media we know it's not just a fad--it's big and the sooner you get on the band wagon, the sooner you can take advantage of its many benefits.